Friday, August 17, 2007

Duets - good, bad and beautiful

Watched the new Lisa Marie and Elvis duet of "In The Ghetto" for the first time. Have to admit I wasn’t overly impressed. Liked her first attempt on "Don’t Cry Daddy" more. In that one, father and daughter interacted in a more obvious way by being on the screen at the same time and the message, although sentimental there as well, worked better. By the way, there’s a lot of guns lying around in the new duet, any chance some of them belonged to Elvis?!

Another posthumous duet is the one between Elvis and Celine Dion singing "If I Can Dream" on American Idol a few months ago. Not to bad, but listening to Celine always makes me think of the Titanic.

Speaking of duets, I remember when I bought "The Lady Loves Me" when it was released back in 1983 as a single. Hearing Ann Margret singing that she would rather dine with Frankenstein than with Elvis was kind of funny, but I always preferred the other side of the single which was "I Can Help".

So maybe Elvis-duets aren’t the thing for me. "There Is Nothing Like A Song" with Elvis and Nancy Sinatra definitely isn’t one of my favourites either. But there is always an exception to the rule, I guess. When Elvis sighs at the end of the duet version of "Today, Tomorrow And Forever" with Ann Margret, I don’t think the reason is the quality of the song but the woman standing next to him.